LL Ori and the Orion Nebula
Explanation:
Stars can make waves in the Orion Nebula's sea of gas and dust.
This esthetic close-up
of cosmic clouds and stellar winds
features
LL Orionis, interacting with the
Orion Nebula flow.
Adrift in Orion's
stellar nursery
and still in its formative years, variable star
LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than
the wind from our own
middle-aged Sun.
As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is
formed, analogous to the
bow
wave of a boat moving through water or
a plane traveling at
supersonic speed.
The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of
center is LL Ori's cosmic
bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across.
The slower gas is flowing away from the
Orion Nebula's hot central star
cluster, the
Trapezium, located off the upper left corner
of the picture.
In three
dimensions,
LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a
bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge.
This beautiful
painting-like photograph
is part of a
large mosaic view of
the complex
stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of
fluid
shapes associated with
star formation.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
